October 2015
Shortly before he was killed, my husband and I moved to a rattle-trap beach house on the peninsula in Long Beach. Going to sleep to the sound of the surf and waking to dolphins and pelicans sustained me through the almost unbearable grief. Making the place habitable gave me a task; writing gave me purpose. I am still here, loving the place, taking nothing for granted. www.donnahilbert.com
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” -Albert Camus
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Author's Note: Autumn contains both withering and rebirth. It is my most productive season, as the rhythm of the school year has never left my body. On the mild coast where I live the fall signs are sly.
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Heart Murmur
The summer I turned seven
I had rheumatic fever,
which sounded like romantic,
but wasn’t.
I spent the summer indoors
because the sun made my nose bleed
and my fever rise.
The doctor in Wichita Falls
said I had a heart murmur
and that my tonsils would have to come out
when the weather cooled.
Lying in my grandmother’s bed,
with my paper dolls and pop-up books,
I heard my mother tell my grandmother
that she was taking me to live
in California.
In California we stayed with Aunt Lucy
who bawled me out for saying crap
and made me go to bed at nine.
I was scared, then, of the dark spaces,
hallways, closets, the oncoming fall.
-from Deep Red. Event Horizon, 1993
Fall
Sitting in my easy chair
left ankle resting
on its opposite knee,
I see my pulse throb
below the knob of bone—
visible proof that sap
still rises in my limbs,
though all around me
old life withers,
drops away.
-from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, PEARL Editions, 2004
Weather Report
From the slow stroll of summer
to the quickened step of fall:
Sun, it’s not about you now.
Soon, the hunter moon will shine.
No wind, scant chance of rain.
Abundant sunshine?
Pilgrim, abandon your dream.
-from The Congress of Luminous Bodies, Aortic Books, 2013
In Plowboy’s Produce Market
I push my cart through Plowboy’s produce market
gleaning this song for the first days of fall:
broccoli cauliflower cabbage kohlrabi
The price of red pepper is dropping.
Eggplant shines purple.
Bell pepper is green.
I watch an old couple choose stringbeans:
she fills their sack by handfuls. He frowns,
empties the bag back into the bin,
then turns each bean to the light
before dropping it in.
pattypan crook-neck pumpkin zucchini
A woman wearing a scarf tight at her chin
eats Thompson’s seedless from the grape bin
Tokay Exotic Muscat Red Flame
At the melons, a man in white shorts, skin brown
as russet potatoes, swings a cantaloupe into his cart.
I think I’m in love.
Winesap Pippin Golden Delicious
where last week there were plums.
Old man, kiss your wife.
Wash your face in the juice of ripe fruit.
Put beans into your sack without looking.
Old man, we’re in Plowboys’s
every bean is perfect, every bean is right.
-from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems PEARL Editions, 2004
The summer I turned seven
I had rheumatic fever,
which sounded like romantic,
but wasn’t.
I spent the summer indoors
because the sun made my nose bleed
and my fever rise.
The doctor in Wichita Falls
said I had a heart murmur
and that my tonsils would have to come out
when the weather cooled.
Lying in my grandmother’s bed,
with my paper dolls and pop-up books,
I heard my mother tell my grandmother
that she was taking me to live
in California.
In California we stayed with Aunt Lucy
who bawled me out for saying crap
and made me go to bed at nine.
I was scared, then, of the dark spaces,
hallways, closets, the oncoming fall.
-from Deep Red. Event Horizon, 1993
Fall
Sitting in my easy chair
left ankle resting
on its opposite knee,
I see my pulse throb
below the knob of bone—
visible proof that sap
still rises in my limbs,
though all around me
old life withers,
drops away.
-from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, PEARL Editions, 2004
Weather Report
From the slow stroll of summer
to the quickened step of fall:
Sun, it’s not about you now.
Soon, the hunter moon will shine.
No wind, scant chance of rain.
Abundant sunshine?
Pilgrim, abandon your dream.
-from The Congress of Luminous Bodies, Aortic Books, 2013
In Plowboy’s Produce Market
I push my cart through Plowboy’s produce market
gleaning this song for the first days of fall:
broccoli cauliflower cabbage kohlrabi
The price of red pepper is dropping.
Eggplant shines purple.
Bell pepper is green.
I watch an old couple choose stringbeans:
she fills their sack by handfuls. He frowns,
empties the bag back into the bin,
then turns each bean to the light
before dropping it in.
pattypan crook-neck pumpkin zucchini
A woman wearing a scarf tight at her chin
eats Thompson’s seedless from the grape bin
Tokay Exotic Muscat Red Flame
At the melons, a man in white shorts, skin brown
as russet potatoes, swings a cantaloupe into his cart.
I think I’m in love.
Winesap Pippin Golden Delicious
where last week there were plums.
Old man, kiss your wife.
Wash your face in the juice of ripe fruit.
Put beans into your sack without looking.
Old man, we’re in Plowboys’s
every bean is perfect, every bean is right.
-from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems PEARL Editions, 2004
©2015 Donna Hilbert